anything was going to happen it would have to be an anonymous tip. Mter a while, the thing just petered out." Well, not exacd Six weeks after the murder-by which time there had been an accumulation of news stories bearing headlines like ''No PROMISING LEADS IN MURDER PROBE" and "CLUES, MOTIVES SCARCE IN MARTINSVILLE SLATING" and "POUCE PUT 'LID' ON FATAL STABBING CASE" -the Indianapolis chapter of the National Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People sent a telegram to the Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, requesting an investigation by the De- partment of Justice. The telegram stated that "Morgan County has historically been associated with Ku Klux Klan-like activities." This was, of course, techni- cally true. And, indeed, the previous year-in the summer of 1967-a Klan motorcade had made a newsworthy tour of several central-Indiana towns which culminated in Martinsville. There, on the courthouse square, thirty or so robed Klansmen carried placards and distrib- uted literature. The Indianapolis Star re- ported that the group's spokesman "said Martinsville was chosen for a demon- stration beéause there is a strong local chapter in Morgan Coun " (Which is not to say that any of the Klansmen ac- tually lived in Martinsville or that any- one from Martinsville had joined the motorcade.) Whether this episode had any connection to the murder was as much a matter of conjecture as most of the other elements of the case. The fed- eral government never undertook a for- mal investigation, but the N.A.A.C.P request helped plant in the minds of people-especially black people-in In- diana and beyond the belief that the Jenkins murder was racially motivated and that no one should be surprised that it had taken place where it did. T he first anniversary of the crime was the occasion for feature stories of the 'N-lybody Know Carol's Killer?" va- riety. Mter that, more than three de- cades went by with virtually no substan- tial media coverage. Still, the crime had lodged in the collective memory of peo- ple who could never quite stop speculat- ing about it. The prime suspect, a con- struction worker whose whereabouts on the night of the murder were unknown, left the state not long afterward and, it was said, later died in a shootout in Illi- nois. Another suspect had been the owner of the auto-repair shop near where Carol's notebook was found, a circum- stance that gave rise to a widely held screwdriver-as-murder-weapon theory: Both men were among several to whom the police administered polygraphs, and all "passed " (which, given the fallibility of polygraphs, proved and disproved noth- ing). Talking among themselves, Mar- tinsville residents named names; often, these ,conversations took place after a few drinks. Beyond Martinsville, the scut- debutt was that the police were unwill- ing or too inept to make the case-a point of view that, in time, the victim's family subscribed to. What stray facts and factoids have surfaced across the years have tended to deepen rather than illuminate the mys- tery: Mter Paul and Elizabeth Davis di- vorced, she married a man named Gene Scott, and they adopted an infant named Phillip. In 1998, Phillip Scott, by then thirty years old, went to see his half sis- ter Laura Davis Watkins-Paul's youn- gest child-and told her that, through friends, he had met people who knew who had killed Carol and how. "They took him to somebody's house in Mar- tinsville," Laura told me. "They said everybody in Martinsville knows who killed her. He said he was amazed at how much these people knew. But, for whatever reason, Phillip wouldn't tell us any more than that." Actuall Phillip did convey one other piece of informa- tion: the murder weapon could be found in an underground gasoline tank at the site of the long-defunct auto-repair shop. Laura's brother Robert contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and soon Paul Davis heard from a Martins- ville police detective. When, a few months later, the gas tank was unearthed, a chisel was found inside, but it didn't match the dimensions of the fatal wound. Two years later, the family received another provocative tip, from a woman who refused to give her name. She had been six years old at the time of the mur- der, she said, but she knew what had happened because she had heard about it from her father. The scenario she de- scribed involved more than one guilty party, as well as a screwdriver. When Paul asked for her name and phone number, she said, "I'm sorry. I have a family. I fear for my life." She never called back. Again, one of Paul's sons got in touch with the F.B.I., ,and again a Martinsville detective followed up. By then-the summer of 200o-Paul had long since become disaffected with both the Martinsville police and the state po- lice, who, he felt, had for years arbitrarily withheld information from him. He hired his own private detective, a former state trooper named William McAllister. It took McAllister "about five minutes," he told me recendy, to ascertain that the i+7J ;" QCfo5s "Now, isn't this more fun than spending money on dinner and a movie "